


The End of the World & Its Beginning

by Alona



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4241328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following Lady Pole's removal to Starecross Hall, she and Stephen Black navigate events and relationships under the double shadow of fairy enchantment and societal pressures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The forest's teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Content Notes:
> 
> 1\. Parts of this story see Stephen in England; as such I felt it would have been dishonest for a variety of reasons not to portray some of the racial micro-aggressions that would have been part of his experience. I have done my best to be both frank and tasteful, and I hope I have done well enough to avoid causing undue pain.  
> 2\. This story leans heavily on the fairy-enchantment-as-abuse element of the novel. Many scenes portray abuse dynamics either covertly or overtly. 
> 
> Historical Notes: 
> 
> 1\. Historical record has it that Yorkshire Luddite activities were confined to 1812; as JS&MN is a work of alternative history, I have chosen to interpret the Johannites as a movement existing in parallel to, rather than one identical with, the Luddites.  
> 2\. The Combination Act (of 1799-1800) briefly alluded to by one of the characters outlawed trade unions and collective bargaining in England and continued in effect until 1824. 
> 
> With those notes in mind, I hope you enjoy the story.

Before the last peal of the familiar bell died in Emma's ear, her room at Starecross Hall had slipped from the world like a film of dust wiped away by a conscientious maid – and Lost-hope House had asserted itself. 

Emma's first care this night, as it had been for many nights now, was to seek Arabella. Often she found her in company with the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, a feverish animation born of enchantment in her manner. Tonight, the gentleman was nowhere to be seen, and Stephen absent along with him. Emma soon spotted Arabella standing near a group of fairies all talking together with many emphatic gestures. She watched one fairy lady make repeated and apparently well-meaning attempts to include Arabella in the general conversation: touching her shoulder from time to time, turning to give her a meaningful smile, leaning over to whisper something in her ear. 

Arabella's features throughout wore an expression of sweet puzzlement. She made no other response to the fairy lady's attentions. 

"Pardon me," said Emma, approaching the group. "I should like to have my friend for a private conversation, if you can spare her." 

The garrulous fairy lady, whom Emma now recognized as a Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring, made a pretty curtsy. From what little Emma could gather about the arrangement of the gentleman's household, this lady was a sort of dependent poor relation. She was rather less handsome than the better part of the fairy guests at Lost-hope but bore an appealing sort of pointed prettiness. Whenever Emma looked at her gown, she smelled at once all the lost fragrances of her own garden at Great Hitherden on a summer's evening; she was unable to say what color the gown was: she tried never to look at it. 

Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring said, "We have all been sharing our memories of an event we assisted at long ago – a grand hunting party. It is difficult to follow, I find, for one who was not there and has not a thorough grounding in our history." 

"I can well believe it," said Emma. "Excuse me." Tucking Arabella's arm under her own, she steered them into a quiet corner where she caused Arabella to sit with her on a bench that she hoped was carved of ivory. She said, "How do you feel tonight, my dear?"

"I do not know," said Arabella. "I thought that I was feeling very well just now, but I seem to have a pain in my head and a kind of..." She paused and took a long look around the room. She tried again. "In short I am not at all sure where I am, or how I came to be here. It is odd to meet _you_ here, Emma, when you have so often expressed your hatred for dancing." 

"Try to remember, Arabella, please." 

Arabella appeared to think deeply. Disquiet grew upon her. In a halting voice, she said, "I must remember... but I do not, quite... because I have been enchanted?"

Emma sighed with mingled relief and apprehension. 

Finding Arabella at Lost-hope had been a crushing blow. Her divorce from reality upon her arrival had added terror to Emma's grief and fury, until Stephen had reminded her how dazed they had themselves been in the early stages of their enchantment: "Fairy magic," he had said, "does not accord with the human mind. Mrs Strange will recover her wits in time. For now you can only support her, and wait."

He had been right. And as Arabella's mind grew clearer the horror of her position dawned on her by degrees. Emma, coaxing her along night after night, felt her heart would break watching the slow progress, and at times almost wished it could be reversed. She prepared herself to review the story once more. She was only too well-versed in it. 

"Go on," she said, putting an arm around her friend's shoulders. 

"I have been enchanted," said Arabella, more firmly. 

"Yes."

"The fairy... the gentleman with the thistle-down hair..."

"That is right."

"He took me from my home. Confused me. I walked such long dreary ages through grey, lifeless moors – through dark forests – so far from the sun – I could not stop, could not even look back. There was a mist upon my mind and a compulsion on all my limbs. And at the end of it all was this house, surrounded by such grisly scenes, and within the awful, endless dances..." A shudder went through her and she began to weep. "Forgive me," she said. "I did not know." 

"It is no matter," said Emma. "You could not have known."

But Arabella only became more distressed. For as long as they were left alone Emma let her friend cry upon her shoulder, stroking her hair and making such soothing noises as she thought might do her good. 

 

"You ought to write your memoirs."

"I beg your pardon?" said Stephen. 

"Memoirs," repeated Jason Carver, a lawyer's clerk with whom Stephen had been acquainted some years. They were sitting across from each other in a coffee house with a pot of coffee and a plate of buns cooling on the table between them. The coffee house was next door to the rooms of Jason's employer, and much-patronized by lawyer and clerk alike. "Abolitionists," continued Jason, "like my Mr Brent, are always looking out to publish the writings of clever Negroes to prove their intelligence and humanity to the English public. And you, Stephen, could hardly be more clever if your skin were fair as a lily."

Stephen regarded him with a coldness that had been known to reduce new footmen to tears. It had no apparent effect on Jason.

"You really ought," he said again, "to write your memoirs. It is a monstrous good scheme, I think, with the potential of profit."

The idea that Stephen, whose room was more stuffed with costly treasures than a lawyer's brain with contradictions, could have any use for profit thus earned!

"It would not be proper," said Stephen. He sat through another five minutes of languishing conversation and then rose, saying, "Excuse me. I have been too long from my duties. Good afternoon, Jason." Leaving coin on the table to cover his share in the meal, he proceeded out of the coffee house and into the street without waiting to hear the end of Jason's bemused parting. 

He supposed he would have to make some amends for his abruptness sooner or later. Casting off all his officious English friends would, he had already decided, involve greater effort than merely ignoring them. Nonetheless he was finding it more and more difficult to be in their company without opening to them their vanity, prejudice, and putrid self-satisfaction. 

On his way back to Harley-street Stephen stopped at an inviting-looking haberdashery to see if he could find a suitable replacement for a hat Sir Walter had lately ruined. The shop was well-lighted and not crowded; in one of the comfortable chairs across from the counter sat a small, shrunken gentleman, fidgeting with undisguised impatience. He wore a familiar malingering grey wig, which Stephen could not have seen without pain even had he not known its wearer to be the first author of his and Lady Pole's misery. 

Mr Norrell tugged on the coattail of an immeasurably fashionable gentleman standing near him who was engaged in talking at a shop-clerk. The fashionable gentleman – Stephen supposed him to be Henry Lascelles – raised a languid hand in a sketch of a gesture, let it fall, and went on with his peroration. 

Norrell's uneasy gaze swept the shop for an object of interest. He stopped on Stephen with a fearful look – he knew him – no, his eye slid away without interest or recognition. Once having absorbed the shock of seeing a black man in a fashionable shop, he had set Stephen down as a servant and was content to take no more notice of him than he would have of a domestic of his own color. Beneath a scum of hatred Stephen observed this progression with a dispassion that mounted almost to grim amusement: the magician was prevented from knowing him – but he knew the magician.

This was the man Lady Pole had nearly shot not a month past. 

When she had told him she wanted to kill the magician it had not been in his power to argue. She had been beyond argument – and so had he. He had made certain the house would be clear and the maids set to mind her distracted. The gun had been his own suggestion – she had not asked; she would have used a knife. 

He had given her the gun – cleaned it beforehand, though it had been spotless to begin with – shown her how to load and fire it. He had retired to his pantry to keep vigil when she was gone. The sharpest emotion he had known since the start of his enchantment had been the shard of agony piercing his heart as he waited for news of her. 

Before she left she had asked him to look after Mrs Strange in her stead if anything should happen to her. He had promised her he would, though the words had been bitter in his throat. 

What he had felt when he knew she had failed had been more than disappointment – it had been a hammer blow, an indescribable rending of some precious thing that had against all odds remained whole until then – it had been hope, dying in an instant. With a heavy heart he had accompanied her to that scene of desolation. She had asked him not to tell Mrs Strange she had done. He had agreed. He would have agreed to anything. 

He watched the magician and thought that there was nothing stopping him from succeeding where her ladyship had failed. 

It would be easy; the rational consequences of such an act would not even touch him: the enchantment that bound him had protected him before – how else to explain that he had not been hanged at once when it was discovered Lady Pole had used Sir Walter's pistol? – and would protect him again. 

Stephen noted with frustration that he had no desire to do such a thing and had never known a shadow of one before. The gentleman with the thistle-down hair had been prepared to kill the magician for years; as a favor to Stephen, he would have gone gleefully to work. Yet Stephen would never ask. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he held this utter, unasked for power to wipe Norrell away with a word that kept Stephen from killing him otherwise – and what would his death be worth, if not known to be at Lady Pole's hand? 

"What a terrifically ugly fellow he is! And dull, too. Look at him wriggle!"

Stephen found the gentleman leaning against the counter beside him. He appeared to have tried on several pairs of gloves while Stephen had been absorbed in his inner thoughts: the neat stacks were all in disarray. A shop-clerk had noticed it out of the corner of his eye, and looked quite distressed at being unable, for no reason he could understand, to get at them. Stephen approved his diligence. 

The gentleman continued: "The English magicians of past generations were all handsome, well-grown fellows. Ralph Stokesey in particular had a most excellent set of teeth, truly a wonder among his countrymen. I was sorely disappointed not to get my hands on them. Now," he said, with a thoughtful frown, "whatever did happen to those teeth? I have a mind to hunt them up and wrest them from whatever fool now holds them. A quest to recover an artifact of great magical potency! What do you say to that, Stephen?"

Stephen did not relish the prospect. There was just a chance that, magician as he was, Stokesey would still be alive somewhere and attached to his teeth. Not seeing that the handsomeness of the magician could have anything to do with it, he thought of suggesting Norrell's miserable headgear as an alternative. 

"Surely, sir," he said, "you sought me out for a better purpose? Whenever you appear it is always to take me on the most fascinating and instructive expeditions. I venture to guess, sir, that you had such an outing in mind on this occasion."

"True, true! My dear Stephen, as ever your discernment is unanswerable. You are quite right in not wishing to waste your time chasing down filthy Englishmen's rotten teeth. I had something much more diverting to show you!"

And then they were somewhere else.

 

Another night, Arabella said, "Jonathan must be worrying himself to death. I am sure he will be here soon to rescue us."

It was not the first time she had made this pronouncement. 

As softly as she could, Emma said, "There is nothing to be expected from that quarter. You must not abuse yourself with false hopes. Mr Strange was tricked – he allowed himself to be tricked, and indeed it is his fault you are here."

"No," said Arabella. 

"He thought only of his book and ignored you. Had he been more attentive, you would have been safe. It is the same with all these magicians – their magic is all they care about."

"Jonathan loves me."

"Patience!" thought Emma. 

Aloud she said, "What does it matter? He may love you all he wants, yet it does not help him to value or understand you. It is easy for a man to love a woman, provided his notion of love exacts from him neither the duty of respect nor the sacrifice of self-conceit." 

"We never could agree about men and marriage, my dear," said Arabella. "You take altogether the wrong view, but there is no help for it, after all. You are too set. To an unwed young lady I might say she would think differently once she was married – "

"For which sentiment she would not thank you," Emma broke in, "and indeed you would say no such thing: you are too good. But, come, we are already the prisoners of a man, fairy though he is; there is no need to prison our minds by speaking only of men. What is there to... Ah! I know: I had a visit today from a Mrs Serrocold, who was once a Miss Jane Honeyfoot of York." 

Mrs Serrocold had removed since her recent marriage to Gorsegap, a town in the vicinity of Starecross. It thus appearing to Mr Segundus that the lady would make a natural and desirable addition to Emma's society, a visit had been arranged. It had not been a great success. 

Emma made no mention of that latter circumstance, instead recounting as faithfully as she could the little histories that Mrs Serrocold had narrated to her. There was one about the family of wrens that had made their nest in a tree-hollow, and the vicar's daughters who had defended the nest against the predations of some small boys. Emma had an impression that the birds had died all the same, but left this out; it might well have been a distortion of her own morbid frame of mind. There was also a confused account, which Mrs Serrocold had had only at third hand, of machine-breakers attacking a mill and evading capture by refuging themselves in a wood. 

"I never heard of these Johannites before," she said, "and Mrs Serrocold made a sad job of explaining their aims and concerns. I have no idea what they might be about, except that they seem to riot a great deal." She shrugged. "It is so long since I have been able to take any interest in such goings on." 

She was gathering together the fraying threads of the next story when the gentleman with the thistle-down hair appeared before them. 

"There you are, my very dear Mrs Strange!" he exclaimed, taking Arabella by the hand. "I have not had a chance to salute you all night." So saying, he brought Arabella's hand to his lips and kissed it. The fixedness of her expression was painful to behold. "Lady Pole will not mind giving you up, I am sure. She has made a habit of monopolizing your company. It is very bad of her! I am sure," he said again, "her ladyship does not mean to make herself disagreeable to me. Are you not _sure_ , Mrs Strange?"

Arabella made a murmur that might equally have been of assent or fear. However it was, the gentleman led her off to join the dance. 

Emma was not surprised when Stephen came to greet her moments later. His gravity and stringent correctness were as ever distantly amusing to her but more welcome than not. In response to his asking after her comfort at Starecross, she gave an account of her visit from Mrs Serrocold that was both more succinct and more accurate than the one she had given Arabella. 

"And after we had made each other thoroughly miserable to the best of our abilities," she finished, "she went away, and I do not suppose she will ever return. But that is quite enough of that. How are things with you, Stephen?"

"The same as ever," he said. 

"You were late in arriving here, I observed."

"Our host had a fancy to interview a family of dolphins currently resident in the waters to the south of France. He rendered their ancestors some service and wished to remind them of their debt of gratitude. I was obliged to accompany him."

"It did not interest you?"

"Today was my day to review the kitchen accounts with John Longridge. I had much rather done that, on the whole."

"And yet dolphins in the sunny Mediterranean are accounted by many a beautiful sight, very worth seeing."

"My lady," said Stephen, with a tilt of his head, "I observed in your chamber at Starecross Hall a number of books of poetry, novels, collections of essays, and such. Have you, since you were installed there, taken down a single one of those volumes to peruse?"

"No."

"Because, I suppose, you know well that the most pathetic scene, the most beautiful verse, the most passionate appeal to emotion would not move you to a single sigh. This enchantment keeps us both from seeing any beauty in the world."

Emma almost asked him whether this meant he, unlike hordes of tiresome men before him, did not find _her_ surpassingly lovely; but it was not a safe question, nor, she suspected, one that he would like. She said, "But, Stephen, you did not know me before I was enchanted. Perhaps I was never the sighing sort of young lady. Perhaps I have always been cold and unromantic. Would you believe that?"

He looked into her face for a long moment and then, glancing away, said, "Yes. I would." Before he turned from her she saw the faintest trace of a smile lingering about the corner of his mouth. 

This had not been so very safe a question, either. 

"Well," said Emma airily, "it has been so long, I do not recall very clearly what I was like. I may have sighed and even wept as lustily as the most sensitive of my sisters, or I may have looked upon poetry with an eye as dry as a bone. It makes no difference now." 

"No."

"I wish that fiend would let Mrs Strange be," she said, catching sight of Arabella and the gentleman going down the line of dancers. "Bad enough she should spend all her days here among fairies without me to support her – it is too much for her to bear being forced to be civil to _him_."

"Does Mrs Strange's condition improve?" asked Stephen.

"I suppose so. She generally knows what has happened to her, but she is often in such a daze of terror that it is hardly better than the daze of enchantment. I do not like to see her like this."

"Yet it is better for her to understand what has happened than to know only lies – I think."

"Do you? I thought so once, but now – I do not know what I think."

A grim, thoughtful silence held between them for several minutes. 

"You know," said Emma, a little timidly, "you are wrong about her."

"Oh?"

"Well – perhaps not wrong. No, not actually wrong. You do not see the full picture. She is a good woman. She means well. The circumstances tell against her. Why, she is even afraid of _me_ at times. I meant," she added quickly, "that I have been her intimate friend for many years, and that she can be nervous of me shows the extremity she is pushed to. You must see how it is. She is frightened. She misses her home and her husband and all the comforts of England. It is no wonder her reactions are not always – what they ought to be. What I might _wish_ them to be."

"I have never said anything about Mrs Strange's conduct, my lady. If you are defending her, it is because you feel there is something to defend against." 

Emma was very much struck with this response and could make no answer. She subsided into a far less comfortable silence, wishing she had not spoken. Stephen stood a little aside, his face working with an emotion Emma hoped was only anger and not contempt. No more words passed between them before he was drawn away into the dance. 

 

"What do they expect to prove, these fools, these anarchists, these – these – _Jacobins_..."

Stephen waited for Sir Walter to remember himself and take up the letters Stephen had brought him, which represented business requiring to be dealt with by Sir Walter personally and at once. 

Instead of remembering himself, Sir Walter brandished his newspaper with still more force and, with some return of his usual manner, muttered something arch about rioters, criminals, and the decay of civilization. 

"Sir?" said Stephen, perceiving that his employer waited only an opportunity to unburden himself. 

"These Johannites, Stephen! They have burnt another mill in Yorkshire – posted a list of demands – and now it seems the main perpetrators have vanished into thin air! Only yesterday the magistrate of a miserable little pocket, a fellow called Serrocold, sent the Home Secretary a frenzied, rambling species of letter, sounding quite convinced the Raven King had already returned and hidden his loyal subjects under a magical cloak. Did you ever hear of anything so absurd? Here is _The Times_ itself ever so delicately hinting at the same thing. And our Most Loyal Opposition asked me if Strange might have done it..."

The name of Serrocold screamed out to Stephen, but he proceeded towards his goal in measured steps. "Why should he do such a thing, sir?"

"Why, according to Grenville, in order to inconvenience Norrell by stirring up trouble on his lands... In fact," said Sir Walter, calming considerably, "nothing would be more likely, to my mind, if I thought mere rioters had a chance at damaging Norrell's property – by which I mean of course his damned library. As it is, though, the suggestion is fabulous, and I am sure Strange knows the old man too well to think of such a hare-brained scheme."

"No doubt, sir. But, sir..."

"Stephen?"

"Is there real danger to Mr Norrell's Yorkshire possessions?"

"Possibly. Why?"

"Starecross lies in the near vicinage of Hurtfew Abbey, I believe." 

"Oh!" said Sir Walter, "you wonder whether I have reason to be concerned for her ladyship's safety. I am glad to say that I do not. This Segundus is reputed to be the mildest, most peace-loving man in the kingdom, and besides there are no mills, manufactories, and so forth, in the immediate neighborhood of Starecross. You reported it was an out of the way place, I think?"

"Yes, sir, the middle of nowhere. But nowhere, if I may say so, strikes me as a most convenient spot for wanted rioters to hide out." 

"There is something in that... Still, if they are hiding out, they will do their best not to draw attention to themselves. I am confident of her ladyship's complete safety. Nothing will harm her at Starecross Hall." 

"As you say, sir," said Stephen. It seemed to him that his words burned with all the bitter irony he felt on the subject, but Sir Walter only nodded as if the discussion had reached a satisfactory conclusion. He turned his attention at last to his letters. 

When all pressing business had been handled, Stephen returned to his pantry, where he found the gentleman with the thistle-down hair studying his own distorted reflection in the base of a silver candlestick. 

"There you are at last, dear Stephen! What kept you? I am sure I have been waiting here a hundred years!"

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, sir, but I had to attend Sir Walter."

He had begun the explanation standing just inside the pantry door; he ended it staggering backwards down a slope that had presented itself beneath his feet. Stephen found his footing and looked about himself warily.

The gentleman swept his arms out in a grand gesture, presenting the landscape to Stephen with unrestrained glee. 

"It is most... majestic, sir," said Stephen, without enthusiasm. 

It was a singularly colorless spot. The slope Stephen had just missed tumbling down was the brief shrubby verge of a forest of ghostly grey trees that began at the base of the slope and went up and up in blank lines that met and held up the high grey vault of the sky. Low in the sky hung a wan white rind of sun. At the top of the slope the verge flowed seamlessly into a grey stretch of undistinguished moor. The moor continued as far as the eye could see. It was the collision of the end and the beginning of the world, held still. There _was_ majesty here; but in Stephen it inspired only dread. 

"Majestic?" repeated the gentleman. "If you say so it must be so, Stephen, for you have the finest inborn sensibility I have yet encountered in a living being. But that is not why we have come. Wait here!" 

And with that the gentleman skipped down the slope and disappeared into the forest, just as if he had walked through a wall. Very like a wall those ancient trees looked – the bare face of a sea-cliff, with the moor as the slow-rolling grey sea and the verge the treacherous rocks mediating between the two inharmonious elements. 

Stephen shivered. He walked to and fro a little to dispel the grim influence of the place upon his spirits. The sun climbed down the sky by degrees, and he began to worry that the gentleman would not return before night fell. 

The quality of the light began to change. It shifted by such imperceptible shades that it was a pure mellow gold before Stephen was aware of it. But in the meantime it had been working on him; peace and comfort had smoothed over his mind so he was almost content. The golden light ripened to rose and suffused the whole landscape. Even the trees glowed, and the moor was a shining mirror reflecting and magnifying the light – meltwater from the recent snows had pooled all over the plane, Stephen saw now. 

Then, as the violet dusk was at its stillest and sweetest, _something_ burst noisily out of the trees. Several somethings followed it, falling one after another on the verge like pellets of rodent bones coughed up by an enormous owl. 

And when Stephen came to examine the things, they proved to resemble nothing so much as those pellets, on a far larger scale. 

About a minute after the last pellet appeared the gentleman walked out of the forest grinning broadly. His clothes were torn and his glorious hair was full of twigs. 

"The wood has eaten them, Stephen! It has eaten the intruders! Ah! How I love to see such a sight!" 

"These were... men, sir?" asked Stephen.

"Oh! yes," exclaimed the gentleman. 

"Some creature in the forest has eaten them?"

"No, no, not a _creature_ – the forest! The very forest itself! This wood," said the gentleman, one long hand hovering caressingly over the trunk of the nearest tree, "is a remnant of a great wood that once spanned many worlds, including my own. It still remembers its glorious past – ah, you rightly perceived its majesty, after all! How wonderfully clever of you, Stephen! – and it does not like to have its dignity insulted. It is the wood that has eaten these interlopers, I tell you."

"Oh!" said Stephen. 

"But first it trapped them in a labyrinth where they wandered for days, growing hungrier and thirstier and wearier, always seeming to see a way out that closed around them, or a glade with a spring running through it that disappeared when they came to it. What a fine old-fashioned sense of humor this wood has – I honor it!"

"Oh!" repeated Stephen. 

There did not seem to be anything else to say. 

When the gentleman had brought them away from the sinister place, Stephen recalled the peace that had descended on him in the dusky verge of the carnivorous wood – and he was sick at heart. 

 

"I will never understand why a woman so beautiful should wish to make herself so thoroughly disagreeable. It is an affront to nature." 

"If I am so disagreeable," said Emma, "why do you keep me here?" 

"A bargain struck is a bargain kept, my dear," said the gentleman. "I am a fairy of my word." 

Without the spell chaining her to the dance, she would have struck him full in the face. She felt the frustrated force mustering in her elbow and shoulder; it was a cramp and an itch now; in the morning it would be a soreness. 

But she could speak, for the moment. 

"You are a fiend and a villain," she said. "You care for nothing but your own pleasure. You are a twisted, stunted thing granted the powers of a demi-god by mischance. I do not even despise you! You are too low. Had I my freedom I would crush you beneath my heel."

The gentleman chuckled uneasily. "What a sweet voice the bird has to sing its song of abuse!"

"And I would laugh as I did so."

"That you would not, most dear misguided Lady Pole. Do you think you will live if once I am pulp sticking to your dainty slipper?"

"I had not thought of it," said Emma. "I do not much care. And I think," she added, "that you lie!" 

"One cannot lie to a woman. She will hear a dozen different things, whatever you say. In some ways, you know, your English magicians are the same."

"They are not _my_ magicians! I rather think they are yours."

"Oh!" cried the gentleman. "Oh! the crazed bird pecks my eyes with its sharpened beak! Its aim is true! I bleed! What – saddle me with responsibility for those wretches? Nay, you shan't: I would not have them as bootblacks in this house, not if they clamored for the privilege. They are _not_ mine."

"Well," said Emma, "they must be someone's; for it is clear they are not their own." 

"It is not right," grumbled the gentleman, "that a beautiful woman should try and be clever. You, who are more beautiful than any mortal woman should rightly aspire to, ought to be happily stupid. It would improve your temper and your outlook; you would be joyful! Your life would be no burden to you, but a pleasure! How you would thank me then! There would be none of this base ingratitude." 

The dance had ended. The gentleman led her apart. 

"Beauty – " muttered Emma, "beauty! It is all these men talk about! 'How lovely you are looking, Miss Wintertowne!' and 'What a splendid figure of a woman you are, Miss Wintertowne!' I spit on them all! And you, with your incessant sniveling. As if there was nothing above beauty! As if the finest face in creation had no working brain behind it, no spirit to give character to its lines. And they tell you above all that it is your duty to please the eyes of men, to please the eyes of all. You may not go into public looking less than your best. If you be plain, make your plainness seemly by the propriety of your dress. If you be merely handsome, dress it up, flaunt it as best you can while the bloom is still on the rose. And if you should chance to be beautiful! Why, then, you are scarce vouchsafed a second quality, unless it be the innocence of a lamb! All your accomplishments are only ornaments hung upon that one grotesque ideal. Pooh! I have heard it all – from my schoolfellows, my governesses, my maids – who themselves repeat the cant having imbibed it with mother's milk, poisoned by – men! And you – you – you fairy fiend!"

The gentleman throughout this rampage had stood very still, watching her with ever-increasing amazement that drove his eyebrows higher and higher up his forehead until they actually met his hairline. Now, addressed in this manner, he said in a high, cutting voice, "I, my lady?" 

"You! What use is beauty to you? Why do you steal us away here to torment us?"

"Who exactly do you suppose I torment?"

"Myself. Mrs Strange. Stephen Black."

"Oh! you see how sadly mistaken your much-vaunted working brain is – Stephen is my dearest friend in the world! I would perform any service for him, go to any lengths! To be sure, he is handsomer than the day is long, but that is quite a different – that is, he is also as wise as Solomon, as brave as Julius Caesar, as discerning as – as – well, as the most discerning Christian who has ever lived, and probably more. In short he unites all virtues, nearly as much as I do myself. You see you are quite wrong. Are you prepared to apologize? Surely I have humored your little tantrum long enough."

And then Emma opened her mouth and screamed. 

The gentleman with the thistle-down hair rolled his eyes.

He folded his arms across his chest. 

Someone was holding her up by her arm. Emma staggered. She felt hollowed out, as if she had been sick a long time. She searched her memories, which were misty and monstrous. Her head roared as if someone had tried to drive a nail through it and got bored midway into the procedure. 

She and her captor or rescuer were in a lonely corridor, lit by two sad tapers and a tall narrow window obscured by creeping branches. The floor appeared to be of earth. 

Emma pulled all her scattered bits together and looked up into the face of Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring. The fairy woman's pretty, pointed features were veiled with irritation and concern. 

"Why did you anger him?" she asked, squeezing Emma's arm painfully. "It does no good."

"I cannot stand for him to have his way in everything, all the time."

"But he always does, nonetheless." 

"No – he did not want to use his magic against me this way; I made him do that."

"In the end," insisted Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring, "he always has his way." She shook her head and slackened her hold on Emma's arm. "I do not know why you fight so. If I were as beautiful as you, I would not fight."

Emma only shook her own aching head in answer; she was not prepared to enter into the question again, and Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring was not to be made into a lightning rod for her fury. 

Then she thought, as long as she had a not actively menacing fairy before her, she might venture upon an inquiry. "Pardon me if it is a rude question," she said, "but – you do not always look thus, is that right?"

"Well..."

"In fact you wear a glamour?" 

"Oh, yes. Certainly. We all do." The fairy woman giggled. "Grandfather chose this one for me himself. He chose them all. You see mine is not the best – I have never been his favorite. My mother offended him once, oh! many years ago now."

"I do see," said Emma grimly. "Is it possible... That is, I know it is dreadful presumption, but I should very much like to see..."

Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring smiled her pretty, pointed smile. Then she was no longer herself. She was shorter, narrower; she had a skin like the bark of a silver birch; very dark hair, glistening dimly red where the light hit it, covered much of her body; it curled. Her fingers and toes were very long and elegant. Only the pointed smile was the same. 

Emma gazed steadily down into the knobby little face with its yellow eyes set too wide apart. 

"Thank you," she said gravely. "I do hope you will not be in trouble for showing me this."

"Not unless you tell someone," said the fairy, and again the refined Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring stood before her, wearing her distressing gown that smelt of a summer night in the country. Emma now saw that it was the same yellow that her eyes ought to have been. 

"I thank you for your attention to me. You are a friend I did not expect to find."

"Oh, as to that! I am surely no friend of yours, my lady. I could not possibly be a Christian woman's friend, not unless she were a magician – and that, I think you are not."

"No indeed."

"Well! You see how it is," said Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring, with an unhappy, ruffled little shrug. "Do try not to make him so angry. It is very unpleasant for the rest of us to see you punished." 

"You have my gratitude, anyway," said Emma. "Now I must return and look after Mrs Strange." 

Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring, for all her disclaimer of goodwill, insisted on preceding Emma into the ballroom, where she melted away into the crowd with a quick bob of her head. Then with some pleasure Emma noticed Stephen and Arabella standing together to one side, chatting with no appearance of disgust in each other's company. 

Approaching them, she found they were both more distracted than otherwise. Their conversation was intermittent. 

"Only I have heard them whispering such dreadful things," Arabella was saying.

"Believe me, Mrs Strange, her ladyship will be well. She is – " 

But what Stephen thought she was Emma did not learn, for at this moment a glad cry broke from Arabella's lips, and she came towards Emma with her hands outstretched. 

"Oh! you _are_ safe, you are! What terrible things we have been hearing!" 

"Yes, you see I am quite as usual," said Emma, returning Arabella's embraces. "It was nothing – a caprice of the enchanter's, wholly in keeping with his character. But how are you?"

"I do not suffer. Though I was in a sorry enough state when I understood what had happened – or thought I did. I have been fortunate in having Mr Black here to reason away my concerns. That has been such a help." She cast rather a shy glance towards Stephen. 

Emma smiled at him as whole-heartedly as was within her faltering power. It seemed he saw something in her face she had not intended to let slip, for at once his expression clouded and he said, "My lady, could we speak in private a moment?" 

"Arabella, do you object? We will be quite near."

"I – that is – " Arabella shook herself a little. "Go on. It is no trouble to me." 

Emma bestowed a final comforting pressure on her friend's hand, then walked a little away with Stephen. 

"You are not well," he said in a low voice. 

"Certainly not," she agreed. "But what of it? For that matter, Stephen, you look as though something has shaken you."

"You can see that?"

"I can. Would it ease you to speak to me of it?"

"In one part," he said. "Do you recall, my lady, you mentioned that you had met with a woman by the name of Serrocold?"

It was not at all what she had expected. Mystified, Emma said, "The former Miss Honeyfoot; yes."

"Is her husband a Mr Serrocold, magistrate of Gorsegap?" 

"Why, yes, I believe so."

"During Mrs Serrocold's visit, did she make any mention of machine-breakers burning down a mill in the town?"

"You know, she did! At least, she said that they attacked it, then hid themselves in a forest." 

Stephen's face grew very still. "I see," he said. "Thank you, my lady." 

"Is it... Do you know something of this, Stephen?"

"I have seen those unfortunate men's fate," he said. 

He looked utterly forlorn. She felt he was drawing away, not behind his customary cloak of formality but into the shadow of something sick and grasping. She reached out her hand and touched his shoulder. 

He flinched. 

"Stephen," she said, "what do you know of these Johannites?"

"They are starving, out of work men who turn their frustration with the government and their own lives upon property and owners of property. They claim the Raven King is returning, and that they follow him. The government is concerned about the possibility of revolution. Sir Walter is so harassed he has started bending his silverware out of shape at meals." 

"How provoking," she said. "They will not come near Starecross, I suppose." 

"No, my lady. From that you are safe. But not, evidently, from drawing the fairy's ire upon yourself." 

"I cannot always avoid it." 

"You do not try."

This Emma could not hear without striking back; for the moment she hardly remembered that she and Stephen were fellow sufferers, that she felt as close to him as she had ever done to another human being: he was a man whose best efforts amounted, finally, to nothing, and like all other men he was pronouncing upon her behavior as if he knew better than she. The embers of her fury kindled. She said, "I assure you that I do, but I have not your surpassing skill at making myself agreeable to fiends."

He made a noise of disdain. "I should not have survived to my present age had I not early learned the trick of being _agreeable_ to white, English fiends. I should have been dead, or worse." 

"In case you have failed to notice it, worse has happened. There is no more need for your pandering."

"That is easy enough for you to say! What do you know of it? What do you know of my fears, of my life?" 

She knew she should stop; any moment now, if she went on, she would say the unforgivable thing – had said it already, perhaps. But the roar in her head increased and the scalding words left her mouth. "Ah! I know – you protect me with your simpering, you try to win me his favor, and I undo it all by speaking my mind – if you could, you would have me released, but you cannot! Admit it. What is your influence over him worth? What does it amount to? Calm, collected, helpful Stephen! Dear, wise Stephen! I heard him speak of you tonight..."


	2. The raven's voice

"...and it was sickening to hear. What does he truly know of you? What is it he esteems in you?"

"What do you know, Lady Pole?" asked Stephen. "What do you esteem me for?"

She had not noticed the change, but it had touched Stephen physically, like a gust of dank air chilling his skin at the opening of a cellar-door. They had stood for a timeless space at the top of a precipice that was as a borderland. Then Lost-hope had withdrawn into the crevices of the background – it was cold blue morning, and they stood together, very close, in her ladyship's bed-chamber at Starecross Hall. He did not know how it had happened, only that he had felt it happen. 

"I know that you are good, Stephen – that you are kind and considerate – that I have always wished that – oh! why must it always be so difficult with you! Have we not known each other long enough? Seen enough of each other's character under the greatest strain? Plotted murder together, even? Have we not suffered enough that you can forget race and class, just for a moment?"

By the first light he saw that the hint of a flush had risen to her cheeks, which had so long been colorless. She was breathing hard. 

"I have not that luxury," he said, "and neither have you. From what you say it is clear that class – and above all race – must always stand between us. It could be no other way. There is certainly no question of forgetting!" He took a deep breath. He was trembling with anger and the effort of not raising his voice loud enough to wake the whole house. "Look around you, my lady!" 

She did. "Oh!" she said. "But how could this...? We must be quiet. My maid sleeps in the next room, to make sure I will not get out in the night... The windows, you see, are barred. One of Mr Segundus's little precautions. Forgive me, I am babbling. Stephen, I do not know what I have been saying..." 

"You knew well enough when you said it. Now I must be out of this house before it wakes. I shall find my own way home." 

He took care to bow to her. 

"But you have neither coat nor boots! Look, there is frost on the ground, it is bitterly cold out – you will freeze. You cannot – "

He turned his back to her and went to the door. 

"No, please, wait!" she cried. Then, recalling her own injunction, she whispered fiercely, "Leave, I see you are determined upon it, but at least take one of my mantles – " going to a clothes chest and rummaging through it "– here, this is plain and dark, with a good warm lining, little different from a gentleman's cloak. Take it, please, Stephen." 

He could not refuse without causing her pain; he received the mantle stiffly from her hands and wrapped himself in its heavy folds. She was right – aside from a small flower on its buckle, it was not very different from one of his own cloaks. It smelled pleasantly of the cedar chest it had long lain folded in.

"Are you sure you will not stay just a moment?" she asked. "I do not want us to part in anger. I regret..." 

Her voice faded as he looked back at her – her energy had left her; she sagged against the clothes chest. 

"Good morning," he said. 

The door opened noiselessly; the maid in the next room did not stir as Stephen crept through. He met no one in the rest of the house and soon he was outside and striding briskly towards the little village. 

At the middle of the bridge he turned back for a last look at Starecross Hall and saw John Segundus wandering through the garden, apparently in search of something or someone. Stephen hurried on. 

The morning was raw and full of fiery sunrise colors glancing off the brittle coat of frost that had bloomed in the bitter night. His anger did not prevent him from feeling the cold through his fine shoes; he drew the mantle closer about himself against the keen breeze and tried not to remember how he had received it. 

It did not matter to him what Lady Pole thought or said; she was an Englishwoman, no different than another. They had long been partners in captivity; it had created an illusion of intimacy he ought never have allowed to endure. There would be an end to all that now. If by any act of his he could free her from the enchantment he would – his humanity revolted from any other course, however stern he was with himself – but all breaches of decorum must now cease. They were not friends. They were nothing to each other. 

He did not believe it. 

He walked on repeating the bleak incantation to himself until he came to the village inn, which rejoiced under the name of the Raven's Eye – its sign, swinging lightly in the breeze, was unnerving. Most unexpectedly, light shone through the cracks between the inn's shutters, and a murmur of tense conversation wafted from within along with the smells of smoke and beer. 

Stephen always took care to have money about his person, in case the gentleman should pick him up and forget him somewhere far from home. In all the years of their acquaintance, it had only happened once, and then they had only been as far as Winchester – but Stephen had not enjoyed the trial of returning. He had intended now to pay a farmer to take him to the nearest town. With the inn presenting itself he opted to take his chances where there was warmth and light, but not without misgiving: for what sort of a crowd would gather at dawn on a morning like this one?

The door was open; he pushed his way inside. At once the conversation dropped to silence. All the inn's occupants looked up at him. There were a couple dozens of them, all belonging to the working classes: mostly men, but with a scattering of women present. They appeared middle-aged in the main, though it was hard to be sure. In every face Stephen saw the hollows of prolonged hunger and the ravages of crushing care. They stared at him, and he, seeing more surprise than malice, hazarded speech.

"Good morning to you!" he said. 

There were answering murmurs ranging from the hospitable to the outraged. One man said in a loud whisper, "Ask if he's here for union!"

An indignant chorus of shushing rose up against him, but it was clear to all that Stephen had heard. He was uncomfortable at finding himself in the midst of an underground trade union assembly – for that it certainly must be: he had been quite right in warning Sir Walter that Starecross's very desolation would attract malefactors. 

The woman sitting nearest the door, of stern and forbidding aspect, asked him, "Are you come for the union meeting, man?" 

"No," said Stephen, "I came to see if anyone present would be willing to drive me to the nearest town. I am prepared to pay, of course." Seeing suspicion in the faces turned to him, he added, "I have been visiting at Starecross Hall and find myself obliged to leave in an unplanned fashion. Beyond that, my business is my own."

"See!" exclaimed a youngish man waving an empty tankard. "I told you there was a princely Blackamoor brought her mad ladyship to the big house! Like a fairy tale, it was!"

He was shushed with even greater energy. 

Stephen drew breath to make a cutting response, whether in his own behalf or Lady Pole's, he did not quite know. 

"He didn't mean nothing by it," said the woman, forestalling him. Her sternness it seemed was no more than a trick of the cast of her features, for her manner was placid and warm. "Who here will drive our guest?"

"Will Gorsegap suit the guest?" asked a tall, rangy man seated close to the fire. "The mail will be coming through it, I suppose." 

"That will suit," said Stephen. "I thank you." 

"Then, if you'll wait for the meeting to let out, I'll run you over in my cart. Shouldn't be more than a quarter of an hour."

A seat was found for Stephen, and a mug of hot cider was pressed into his hands by the proprietress of the inn, who was singularly worried by the fact of his having no boots. She supposed, she said, the cold must be especially hard for him to bear, used as he was to the heat of Africa. He did not trouble to disabuse her of her error. Over her protests he paid for the drink. 

Despite his best efforts to keep a hold on consciousness, he half-dozed in the close warmth of the inn, with the Yorkshire voices blending around him into a pleasant buzz but for the occasional clear phrase. When rather more than a quarter of an hour had passed, the rangy man, whose name was Foster, led him out into the yard behind the inn, where a horse and cart waited. Day had broken in earnest now. 

"You won't be telling anyone about this little get-together, will you now?" said Foster.

"Certainly not."

"With the Combination Act..."

"Quite." 

Then they were bumping along the road, and Stephen was hating every inch of the landscape, hating it fiercely and personally for the misery it had already caused him, wishing nothing more than to leave it behind him once again. But as he wished it his mind was conspiring against him, piecing together what he had heard of the final stages of the meeting. The conclusions stirred an uncomfortable thread of memory. "Mr Foster," he said, "what was it I heard back there about the magistrate of Gorsegap hunting laborers?"

"Ay," said Foster grimly, "you heard right – Mr Serrocold won't rest till he sees the leaders that torched Collins' mill in jail. Happens we'd also like to see it, as we'd know then they were alive, and not taken by the bad fairies. For we have seen nor heard nothing of them since the night of the fire." 

Stephen shivered. 

"And if these leaders are not apprehended..."

"Our duty-loving magistrate will round up whoever he can set his hands upon."

Stephen was no longer in any doubt that the perpetrators Serrocold sought were identical with the pellets spit out upon the verge of the dreadful wood. There was no way he could see of getting out of using this knowledge for the laborers' benefit – and equally no way to use it effectively. If he found someone willing to listen to him, how would he explain the source of his information? Would he even be able to speak of it, or would he be prevented, the same as in speaking of any portion of his enchantment? 

"There is no reason for me to bother about it," he thought. "I am not responsible. I have nothing to do with these unfortunate people, and I must return to Harley-street at once."

Yet the power to help had been thrust into his hands, and he would wield it as well as he could – if he only knew how. 

He had reached no satisfactory conclusion when Foster left him standing in Gorsegap's high street. 

 

Emma had known nothing but empty, wearisome days for many years. But none had been so empty and wearisome as this. Her thoughts went round and round, futile and trapped like so many flies in a jar. She almost welcomed the stimulation of Lost-hope's gloomy festivity. It was something outside of herself. 

Above the clamor of her heart and mind, a single drive had surfaced and predominated: at the first opportunity, she would at last tell Arabella how she had meant to kill Gilbert Norrell. It was a most perverse desire. Having driven Stephen away, she almost anticipated comfort from driving away her only other friend in the world. A penance, to be sure, but a necessary penance, undertaken voluntarily. Arabella was ready for it; she had been calm and in possession of her senses for some nights now; if Emma delayed any longer, she would be lying; and she could not suffer anyone she cared for to be lied to, least of all by herself. 

When she had taken Arabella aside she launched without delay upon her confession. 

"Arabella," she said, "there is something I must tell you."

"What is it?" asked Arabella, alarmed. "You are so pale and cold. Is there some fresh evil plaguing you?"

"After you were enchanted... Please try not to think too ill of me..."

"I could never think ill of you," said Arabella. "Emma, my dear, you are trembling all over – if it is so difficult to communicate, it can wait."

"It has waited long enough," said Emma impatiently. She curled her hands into fists. "Arabella, when you were enchanted, I took my husband's dueling pistol and went to murder Norrell."

Arabella recoiled – she folded her hands close to her chest and stared at Emma with incomprehension and dawning horror. 

"What!" she said. 

"There – you see?"

"But... Oh, but why should you do such a thing? Did the fairy force you to be his tool in an assassination? Oh, my dear! How you have suffered!"

"Arabella, I did it of my own will! It is almost the only thing I have done entirely of my own will since I was enchanted! I wanted to kill him, you understand? For what he did to you. So someone would know." 

"Because your being here is my fault," she thought, but did not say. 

She continued: "I thought if I killed Norrell, your husband would have to take heed of me – see me, at least, and have a chance of learning of our enchantment in that manner. He is supposed to be a clever magician." 

"Oh! Then... from what you say... you did _not_ kill Mr Norrell?"

"No," said Emma. "I failed. John Childermass got in the way and I shot him instead. They tell me he survived, I am glad to say. But there was no publicity. Norrell would have pressed charges, but he was persuaded by my husband to hold back. That is why my husband removed me from London." 

"You told me it was for the sake of your nerves."

"And so it was! Starecross Hall has done me good. I am much easier without Walter always moping about. I did not _lie_ , Arabella: I was simply not ready to tell all the truth." 

"Until now."

"Yes." 

"Well!" said Arabella. She seemed to have absorbed the information with remarkable speed, all the same. "I hardly know what to think. Did... Was Stephen Black involved in this plot?"

The question galled Emma, scraping wounds that were too fresh to have begun to heal. "It was my plot," she said. "But Stephen helped me. He knew what it meant to me, and that I would have done it with or without his help. He would rather help than not. It is his way. He is a fastidious man." 

"That is an odd sort of compliment to pay someone – I am not sure it is a compliment at all."

"I mean it as one. I think it is even one Stephen might accept. At least, I hope so. I am afraid... Last night I lost my temper and grievously offended him. I hope he can forgive me, one day." 

"No doubt he will," said Arabella vaguely. She paused a minute and continued in a gentle, earnest voice. "Listen, my dear Emma, I can see what it cost you to make this confession to me, but I do not for a moment believe it."

Emma stared at her. "It is true, nonetheless," she said. 

"No. You _could_ not do such a thing – no woman could: therefore you _did_ not do it. It is a delusion the fairy has put into your head to confuse you. I am sorry for it, Emma. I see it gives you pain, and I hate him for causing it. You have been so good to me, clearing my mind from the webs of enchantment cast upon me – I feel I must repay the favor."

"No," said Emma. "It happened. You may ask Stephen."

Arabella only looked at her pityingly and patted her hand. 

And Emma, who had been too shocked to cry all that day, felt tears building in her eyes and throat. She choked out an "excuse me" and went off into the crowd. She breathed deeply, until the room no longer fractured into dim points of light. Seeing an unengaged fairy gentleman, she asked him for a dance. It was not a done thing; she certainly had never done it before; but he went with her to the line of dancers without any surprise. 

Emma tried not to think too much as she danced, but thoughts came crowding in. Arabella, as ever, thought she was acting for the best. It was impossible to her that her dear good friend should be a murderess, even a failed one: she made up a story to suit her view. If it restored some lost balance to their friendship in giving Arabella the chance to be useful to her, that was all to the good. Emma did not blame her – though there was part of her that whispered there was treachery in so much forgiveness. 

And Emma, besides, had her memories; she knew what that walk to Hanover-square had cost her, with the streets around her disfigured by erupting shards of Faerie; the people only dim ghosts; and the weight of the pistol in her muff. Her hands had smelt of metal and gunpowder afterwards. It was real. 

She remembered receiving the gun from Stephen's hands. He had not thought ill of her – then.

She had already decided she would not seek Stephen's company this night: she could not hope for any self-command in his presence. 

Emma danced. Towards morning, for a moment, she came close to forgetting why she danced so desperately. 

 

Stephen had taken a room at Gorsegap's tiny inn and dispatched a note to Harley-street explaining his absence with an unavoidable degree of fabrication. 

At some cost in fermented beverages bought for local residents, he had acquainted himself with the situation in town and found it worse than expected – during the night a number of men had been arrested who had likely had no part in the attack but were known to be Johannites, or if not precisely Johannites then certainly radicals; one among them was the most popular nonconformist preacher in the area. The magistrate held that more arrests would follow until those who were hiding the ringleaders of the attack gave them up. The atmosphere simmered with tension. 

Stephen had further learned of a place called the Needlewood that lay about three miles from the town. He could just see it from his window at the inn when the sky was clear – a ghostly pillar reaching for the sky. It was commonly supposed to be the ringleaders' refuge, but it had been searched without issue. The searchers had not known what they were looking for – by now the remains would look like nothing human, and who would guess that such a fate had befallen the missing men? 

In asking after the wood he had encountered no difficulty being understood, which gave him to hope he had not set himself an impossible task. 

The trouble of finding someone to hear him remained. 

An anonymous note to the enraged magistrate would do nothing. He considered and dismissed the possibility of seeing Mrs Serrocold under the pretense of having a message for her from Lady Pole. Without knowing the first thing about the lady's relations with her husband, such a maneuver could have disastrous consequences without doing a shred of good. He even thought of returning to Harley-street and gaining Sir Walter's aid – but his every feeling revolted against it.

On the second day of his stay in Gorsegap, the mounting tension burst out in a riot. Stephen heard it and took it at first for thunder – until the frightened looks of those around him in the inn's parlor gave him the true story. From the window he could see the street roiling with people, the more numerous and scattered laborers and the fewer but better armed gentry. Among the crowd he recognized most of the assembly from the Raven's Eye. 

The inn's proprietors foresaw trouble and urged those guests who had not gone to join one side or the other to leave the town. 

Stephen saw the wisdom in this. He left the inn by the back entrance as soon as the way was clear and went beyond the last of the buildings and then a little further up the road, until he was close to the town's neat little church. The day was warmer and a good deal muddier – Stephen frowned at his ruined shoes in distaste. 

And then the riot broke free of the town and came most inhospitably towards him, augmented it appeared by the population of all the villages in the surrounding parish. Soldiers in distinctive martial red had joined both parties of aggressors. The crowd was a living wave; he was in imminent danger of being swept up in it. Seeing a door standing open in a stone wall by the side of the road, he ducked behind it. The door swung to with a wet thump. 

He was in a dark place smelling of damp wood. Here and there points of light came through minute cracks, serving to heighten rather than relieve the darkness. With his arms held out before him Stephen groped along one wall until he came upon a closed shutter. He felt around for the latch. The closed door muffled the shouts of the crowd almost to silence. 

He heard a sound from his other side. 

Out of the darkness came a faint scuffle and a sharp intake of breath. A grave child's voice pronounced: "I greet thee, Lord, and bid thee welcome to my heart." 

Stephen found the latch and pushed open the shutter. Brilliant daylight flooded in.

When he moved out of his own light Stephen saw caught in the beam a stout girl some twelve years old, holding her arms up before her face to block the light yet squinting around them for a glimpse of him. Her dress was of good quality but not notable for fashion. Her hems showed signs of having been let down a number of times. 

"I am sorry, young lady," said Stephen. "You see I am not he whom you took me for." 

She lowered her arms to her sides, stared wide-eyed and amazed at him, then screwed up her face and yelled: "Cat! Cat, come here, come here! Cat, I need you!"

Stephen tensed. He heard the patter of rushing footsteps. Another girl, a few years older, arrived carrying a covered basket on one arm. She was tall and plain, with a marked forward set to her head. Her clothing was as proper and as unadorned as the younger girl's. She gave Stephen a long, searching look. Then she said, "Well, what is the trouble, Hester?"

"Cat, I summoned the wrong king," said the girl Hester, pointing at Stephen. 

"That you did." 

"He is a Southerner!" said Hester, sounding greatly offended.

"Indeed," said the girl Cat. "Good sir, explain yourself, please." 

"I am no king," said Stephen. "My name is Stephen Black, of London – as your sister perceived." 

They were not so similar in appearance, yet Stephen was sure they must be sisters. 

"We are the vicar's – Mr Miller's – daughters," said the older girl, confirming his guess. "This is Hester, and I am Cat – Catherine. I was called after the Lady Catherine of Winchester," she added, ducking her head bashfully. "How do you come to be here?"

"I must apologize for my intrusion, Miss Miller, Miss Hester – I took refuge here from the rioters passing in the road." 

"Oh! was the outside door left open?" asked Cat. "Hester, this is your doing."

"Certainly not!" returned Hester. "I wouldn't want to be interrupted. I came in here to practice magic!"

"Hester is going to be a magician," said Cat in a tone expressing worldly resignation much in advance of her years.

"I hope not," said Stephen. "It is a pernicious profession. It degrades the human feelings of its practitioners and turns them into monsters." 

"It certainly degrades their digestion. Mr Norrell dined once with Father," Cat explained, "before he was famous – I never heard anyone find so much fault with our poor Mrs Allston's cooking. I would have put a mouse into his bed, if I could have found one." 

"We were not allowed to be there," said Hester. "Cat snuck out of the nursery and listened at the door." 

"Is there anything we can do for you, Mr Black? Would you like to see our father?"

Stephen was about to make his excuses when a dim possibility occurred to him. He said, "What does your father make of this rioting, Miss Miller?"

"He's much saddened by it, naturally. He has spoken to Mr Serrocold upon the topic of clemency – and he put it into his sermon the other day, which Mama thought was too pointed of him! – but Mr Serrocold will not be clement. If only we knew where those men had gone!"

"I know where they have gone," said Stephen, "but I do not know how to make anyone believe me."

"Father will believe you," said Hester. "He would see the light of truth in your face. If you were telling the truth. He always knows when _we_ are lying." 

Stephen did not, _could_ not share her confidence, but he agreed to be brought to the vicar. The girls took him through the dark passage – it proved to be a sort of shed partially attached to the vicarage – and without delay he found himself seated in the vicar's study across from the occupant himself. A picture had been forming in his mind of a severe man full of religious fervor, but instead he found Mr Miller a soft, balding doughnut of a man with ruddy round cheeks. True, he was rather tall, but he dissimulated his height with a modest stoop and the narrow fidgeting movements of a smaller man. 

If he was surprised to find himself introduced to a visiting black Londoner by his eldest daughter, he made no show of it. He offered Stephen a glass of sherry wine and asked him to explain his business. He promised his daughters he would report the conversation to them later, if only they would now be good and go away without listening at the door. They left without protest. 

"I have a necessary duty to perform," Stephen began. He had not ceased to argue himself backwards and forwards about how best to mix truth and invention, but only the absolute truth was worth being spoken – he had known that all along. He said, "I cannot tell you how I came to know it, but there is an ancient forest near here called the Needlewood which is inhabited by a malignant force." 

The vicar allowed that he had heard such tales before.

"Into that forest went the men responsible for the attack on Collins' mill. They did not leave it alive, and never shall. Mr Serrocold's hunt for them is futile and his persecution of the other workers unjust. The forest – the forest consumed them. I know this to be true, but I cannot say how." 

There was a long silence and then Mr Miller said, "Well!" He fidgeted in his closed-in way and his cheeks compressed into worried lines. "Well!" he said again, "I can see you mean what you say... And, to be sure, it is far from unlikely, whatever some very learned people have said about..." 

Stephen could see his mind working furiously with knotty contradictions. He waited, his momentary hopes seeping away. 

At last Mr Miller said, "I don't know how it is to be done, but I will make sure your information brings the relief you intended. I am most grateful to you for coming forward, Mr Black. I imagine..." He hesitated. "I imagine it was not an easy decision?"

Stephen felt a surge of horror – the man was going to be sympathetic towards him! "On the contrary," he said freezingly, "it was my duty, and I carried it out as soon as I was able." 

"Well, I am grateful to you, all the same. It is not every man who sees his duty so clearly. Can I render you any assistance?"

But Stephen only wished to be gone. 

 

"Just supposing we were friends," said Emma, "what would I call you?"

"You might call me _Kill_ ," said Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring uncertainly. "It is what my relations call me when they mean to be affectionate." 

"No... Should you like to be called 'Spring'? It would suit you." 

"I would like it," the fairy admitted. "Only that is what Lady Rosebuds-on-the-Cheek-of-Spring is usually called, and being far more beautiful than I she has the better claim to it."

"But that is no obstacle to my using the name – if you will permit me." 

"Please do! It will be so diverting. Are you entirely sure, after all, that you are not a magician?"

"You have asked me that no less than five times now, Miss Spring. My answer has not changed." 

Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring heaved a sigh. "Only we could have such adventures if you were! I might be important – I should like to be important, even a little. Fairies are always important who have been clever enough to attach themselves to English magicians." 

"Put it out of your mind, please! I have a particular aversion to English magicians. It would distress me to count myself among their number." 

"Oh, well. If it is like that with you... You know, I did have a friend once," she said wistfully. 

"A fairy?"

"No."

"A human, then?"

"Oh, no."

"What, then?"

"As a matter of fact, it was a wood. A lovely, ancient wood. There were still dark waters there that the sun never shone on, with wonderfully vicious little creatures living in their depths. In the heart of the wood there were hidden groves of birches that sang with me when the dews were upon them." Her eyes slid closed in reminiscence. "We would go there to hunt, long ago, my family and I, but the wood never liked any of them as it liked me. I could pretend it was all my own – _my_ friend, _my_ secret. Mine." 

It was not a nice sentiment at all, but Emma felt a stir of sympathy for the fairy's pitiful selfishness, which seemed to have no other outlet but this memory of a wood she had loved. 

"Do you never visit it any more?" she asked. 

"Never," said Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring. "I once asked Grandfather to take me there, but... he would not. Perhaps it is not there anymore, and he did not like to tell me. I have heard Christians are not friendly with woods and like to cut them down or tame them. Why do you do it?" she asked. 

"Woods are not friendly to us, in the main," said Emma. "They served the Raven King, once, but we have squandered his contracts – and he is gone." 

"But he is sure to come back, you know." 

"Is he? Would that do any good, I wonder." 

"Kings do not do good," said the fairy. "That is not what they are for." 

"Well, then I have no use for them," said Emma. 

"You have the oddest notions. It cannot be that all Christian women are like you, for Mrs Strange is so very sweet and obliging, and has no notions at all." 

This speech was not very complimentary towards Arabella. "You judge Mrs Strange unfairly," said Emma. "Her notions are not out of the common way, but that does not mean they are absent. And her common notions keep her from being disagreeable – you value that, at least." 

"Did you think I meant any evil of her? Oh! no. I am very pleased to have Mrs Strange's society. She is a welcome addition to the house." 

"How can you say that, when she is so very unhappy and afraid?"

"Is she?"

"Naturally! She has been stolen away from her home!"

"Well," said Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring, "I am sure she does not mind it." 

"I had forgotten," said Emma sadly. "You are no different from the rest of these fairies. You are right – we would never be friends." 

Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring only shrugged. "What else should I be but a fairy?" she seemed to be thinking. 

"Never mind, Miss Spring," said Emma, blaming herself soundly for having imagined a spark of humanity where there could be none. "Please tell me more about your friend the wood." 

She obliged, speaking at considerable length, but Emma was not attending; she was watching for Stephen to appear, for she was determined to speak with him. She had thought deeply since their last disastrous conversation. It had been almost impossible to keep to a single idea with the enchantment weighing down her mind, but she had struggled through. 

As morning approached she began to think he would never come – she was resigned to it –

"Oh!" said Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring, "there is Stephen Black. How fine and noble he always looks!"

Emma jumped to her feet with her pulse fluttering. Stephen stood alone at the far wall, deep in thought. Emma hesitated. She made her excuses to the fairy woman, took what courage she found lying around into her hands, and crossed the room. 

With a sense of being ridiculous, she said, "Pardon me, Mr Black."

He looked at her with obvious astonishment and said nothing. 

"Good evening, sir," she said.

"Good evening, my lady."

"I wondered if you would do me the honor of taking breakfast with me in the morning – that is, if you are still in the neighborhood of Starecross." 

"I am," he said. 

"Then – shall I tell Mr Segundus to expect you?"

"Will he not think that odd?"

"And why should I care what a madhouse keeper thinks of me? Please say you will come." 

She read in his face that he was on the point of refusing. 

"Please," she said, "your – your friendship is precious to me. I should like a chance, at least, to set things right between us. To apologize as I ought. I have thought a great deal on what to say, so I will be concise. It is not so much to ask – it is only breakfast. You may go away and hate me afterwards." 

"Is it so important to you?"

She nodded. 

"You may expect me, my lady." 

She nodded again, smiling as well as she could with the corners of her mouth trembling.

"We were neither of us at our best the other night – "

"No!" cried Emma, "not here!" More calmly she said, "I do not wish to speak of it here. Never here." 

"I understand," he said. "I shall see you in the morning. Then we shall speak of it." 

"Thank you," said Emma, for a moment imagining she heard from terribly far away the clear glad song of victory being sung for them both. 

 

The table was laid and coffee was poured out; Lady Pole had asked the maid to leave them alone. Outside the sky was overcast, and a drizzle veiled the landscape. Indoors the candles had been lit against the encroaching murk, and not all the shadows they cast came from the familiar, useful objects in the cheerful breakfast-room. The first greetings had been exchanged and they sat wrapped in a numb silence. 

Stephen had not wanted to come, but the pleading look in her eyes had overwhelmed him. 

"How did you know I would still be in Yorkshire?" he asked. "It is more natural, surely, that I would have returned to London by now."

The shadow of a smile touched her face. "Mrs Serrocold came on purpose yesterday to have someone to tell about the fascinating guest her vicar had received. Poor lady, I think she is bored. Her society must be very limited."

"What did she say of me?"

"That you had upset her husband's plans to prosecute the whole parish."

"Yes. I stayed to see it done – and it was."

"I congratulate you."

"Did she say anything else?"

"That the vicar's daughters would not stop asking after you." 

"I believe it," he said. 

Then slowly he told her of the grey wood that was the end of the world and the beginning, of the clear golden light at dusk, of the sad pellets spit out upon the toothy verge. She listened with her face still and solemn, looking into the middle distance between them with one hand wrapped around a cooling coffee cup. 

"When you perceived that I looked shaken," he said, "that is why. I had not been able to put it out of my head. Only now that I have used the grisly knowledge for some bit of good can I begin to let it go." 

"I see," she said. "I thought tonight at Lost-hope that you were going to apologize to me – that is why I stopped you so abruptly. The influence of that place ruins all kindly intentions. We are not free from it even here, but at least we may pretend. It would have been a terrible thing to have you apologize to me. You know – I think you know better than I do – that all the apology must be on my side." 

He could not contradict her. He waited for her to go on. 

"There is so much that has never been said between us, that perhaps ought to be said. We have been living but half a life, and I think we have both tried to have only half an acquaintance. But from the beginning – as far as I can recall the beginning, for much is lost to me – you have been a steadfast friend to me – you have seen the lowest moments of my life and have always shown me respect I never hoped to meet with from any man – we have been thrown into this pit together by chance, but knowing you as I do now, I am convinced you are the best ally I could have had. Your tremendous fastidiousness has been a greater comfort to me than any other quality in any other being could have been. I only hope I have in some measure deserved your respect and your compassion. I am sorry that my ignorant words hurt you. I was distressed, but it is no excuse. I do not ask you to forgive me – "

"I have already forgiven you," he said. 

She bowed her head. He saw tears rain down her cheeks.

He looked delicately away and spoke in the direction of the sideboard. "It is tiresome to be overestimated as I have been for many years," he began. "One is not estimated as a man, when one is black in the midst of a white society. There are those who despise you, but that is far from all of it. Your good qualities are blown all out of proportion and the recognition of them worn like a badge by your friends – who are, to be sure, only your friends so long as you do not weigh down their minds with anything that is hard or rebellious in you. Whenever you spoke of my goodness, imagine how it sounded to me. Just the same as if you were any one of those others, condescending to me as a novelty."

"I am sorry," she said in a thickened voice. "It may have been that way to begin with – I lay claim to no extraordinary virtues for one of my race – but it has not been so for a long time now. I have seen your anger – I have tried to understand it, especially when I have been its target – and do not think that I have resented it, more than I could help. Anger is all that seems to thrive under this enchantment, and you have at least as much right to it as I. If I have not spoken of any of this before, it is because I was afraid – afraid of driving you away. Afraid that if I spoke you would be lost to me forever. And..."

He turned and met her eyes. A question trembled on her lips, but she did not ask it. 

"I am not lost to you," he said, "no. So long as I call England my home, though it is but of necessity, I shall call you – my friend. I helped you at first because I could not watch a fellow creature suffer as you did – but I have learned to know you, too." 

"And has your opinion of me increased because of it?"

"I have no great examples for bravery in my experience, but I know you are the bravest person I have ever met."

"That is a quality worth being esteemed for." 

"As is fastidiousness." 

She actually laughed. It was a weak, watery chuckle, but with the distant echo of gladness in it. She said, "I hoped you would think that." 

"You invited me for breakfast, my lady, yet I observe neither of us has eaten a bite." 

"Very true." A frown creased her forehead. "It is silly to stand on formality any longer – you must call me 'Emma'. It would do me good to hear it from you." 

He tried to read her motives in her countenance. 

"And if I refuse?" he asked. 

"Well – then, sir, you must henceforth be 'Mr Black' to me." 

"And if I should prefer that?"

"Then tell me so."

"As it happens, I do not – Emma." 

For a flash it seemed all the light in the room was concentrated on her face. Then she looked down at the uneaten meal almost severely and said, "I will order more brought in." 

Then they had, most bizarrely, almost a normal, amicable breakfast. He told her of the rest of his adventures in Gorsegap – they were adventures now that he had left them behind, with the dire weight of those dead men lifted from them – and she especially enjoyed his account of meeting the vicar's daughters. 

"I spoke to a fairy last night," she said, "who told me the Raven King would return. I must tell her when I see her again that he has – and is you."

"I pray you will not," he said. 

"No – it was a jest. I have not the taste for fairy company." 

It was a curious remark to make, and he asked her to explain it. She told him how she had almost been befriended by Miss Killing-Frost-in-Spring.

"Not a bad fairy in her way, I think – but their way is cruelty and caprice, and I could never hold with that." 

Time went on, and the consciousness of his waiting duties grew upon him. "I must after all return to Harley-street some time, and there will be a mail coach passing through Gorsegap close to noon. I can be on it if I leave soon."

"Well – we will see each other again. There is no doubt of that." 

"Will you take back your mantle, Emma? It is a warm day. I will not need it."

"I suppose you have had it cleaned and all its fraying edges snipped." 

"I have."

"Please keep it, Stephen – I have no use for it, or any other such garment. I do not go outside." 

"Very well."

They were to part from each other in the hall. Stephen made a bow, thinking it would amuse her as it often did. She made half a movement – 

And then she threw her arms around him. From astonishment he held her as she lay her head against his shoulder. He had always known she was a small woman, but it had never struck him before – now he thought it was unseemly that he should be able to rest his chin on the crown of her head. 

He had thought she would remember herself in a moment, but she did not, and he could not have pushed her away for the world. 

Long after he had begun to worry someone would come along and see – he could not help worrying, did not even try – she drew away, slowly at first, then in an embarrassed rush. 

She looked at him with an open, nervous face, smiled, and went away without another word. 

On his way back to Gorsegap to catch the mail coach, Stephen again hated every inch of the landscape; he hated England, and much of his life – but for the moment the gall of that hatred did not burn him as deeply, and that was not nothing.


End file.
